Rambling Boy

In this week's Rambling Boy, Lonn Taylor takes us back to the meeting of the Texas Convention in 1836. At this meeting, held for 17 days in an unfinished building at Washington-on-the-Brazos, a rough bunch of 59 Texans drafted a constitution for the new republic, organized a government, and appointed a president. Most of the delegates were representative of the frontier Texas environment, and after the convention, they returned to their roles as patriarchs in their hometowns.

Listen as Lonn takes us through the history of this rowdy bunch, tales of transients, a Mexican aristocrat, and Collin Mckinney, with whom Lonn has a surprising family connection.

Today on the Rambling Boy, Lonn breaks down he history of President's Day, George Washington's infamous cherry tree story, and a big George Washington birthday bash that happens in Laredo, Texas.

On this edition of The Rambling Boy, Lonn talks about his experience with Dr. Paul Will, Professor Emeritus of Animal  Science at Sul Ross State University.

Will has been teaching students how to process meat 39 years, including a class in sausage making, which ends with a contest to see who can make the tastiest sausage.

Lonn Taylor reads lots of books about history, and recently read one about quilts -- Katherine Jean Adams' Comfort and Glory: Two Centuries of American Quilts.

On this edition of the Rambling Boy, Lonn tells us about a few Texas quilts, and what they reveal about both their makers and the times in which they were made.

On this episode of Rambling Boy, Lonn Taylor lays out the ways in which he believes we can make America great again.

After the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson found himself the president of a nation with a civil rights problem. While his advisors told him he should not be announcing civil rights as a top priority, President Johnson felt, deeply, that civil rights should be at the top of the agenda. After a grueling 7 months of filibustering and sticking to what he believed to be the fairest approach to civil rights, president Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill into office, extending the full rights of citizenship to millions of Americans who had previously been denied this right.

On this Episode of Rambling Boy, Lonn Taylor talks about the responsibility of the President to ensure ...

On this weeks's episode of Rambling Boy, Lonn Taylor talks of the rowdy sessions of The Congress of the Republic of Texas. The Congress was extraordinary source of entertainment; pitchers of water were thrown at harmless old ladies and speeches were made to dogs, but above all was Robert Wilson, an extravagant rabble-rouser of a senator who was kicked out of the Senate for being too erratic, but found his way back in, arriving on the shoulders of his supporters and drunkenly announcing himself by blowing into a bugle.

In this week’s episode of Rambling Boy, Lonn Taylor tells the story of an accidentally illegal international footbridge running from Candelaria to to San Antonio del Bravo. Though the bridge was originally crafted for convenience, connecting two towns across the Rio Grande, it was later seen as a threat to national security, raising questions of boarder control and wide line where Mexico and America meet.

Lonn Taylor loves Christmas cards -- for many reasons. But he suspects they're waning in popularity and is sometimes tempted to quit mailing them.

On today's installment of the Rambling Boy, Lonn tells us a bit of history about the first Christmas cards, why he hopes someone creates a Christmas card archive for future historians, and why he plans to keep sending them out.

In this week's edition of Rambling Boy, Lonn takes us back to the Big Bend of the 1890s through  El Paso Public Library's archive of files from Murphy and Walker, a general mercantile store in Marfa.